Roald Dahl Day Dinner

Did you know that the 13th of September is Roald Dahl Day? The 13th of September would also have been his birthday.

Unfortunately, he passed away in 1990 however his books live on from generation to generation. Is there anyone who hasn’t enjoyed one of his stories (after all there are over 30 published) from being mesmerised by the Chocolate factory to being thankful your school wasn’t run by Miss Trunchbull!

For years Roald Dahl day has been celebrated in a variety of ways, mostly within Schools. My son and I love to create fun activities to do together so a couple of years ago I surprised him with a fun Roald Dahl Day dinner on September 13th.

In this post I am showing you how you can recreate this themed dinner.

* Please note that there are affiliate links below, meaning (at no extra cost to you) I can earn commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Create a fun themed menu

Think of food which you can link with one of the stories from Roald Dahl’s books – it doesn’t necessarily need to be anything complicated though as you can see from my sample menu above. You can then write down each course with a themed name on your menu which can be presented to your guests/family along with a chocolate Wonka bar.

Dress up

To really add to the fun theme dressing up is encouraged – there are SO many characters to choose from!

Main course

I opted for ‘wormy spaghetti’ which was just a standard homemade spaghetti bolognese. Tip: cut up the spaghetti a little to make it more messy and ‘wormy’ to fit in with the scene from The Twits book where Mrs Twit adds real worms to her husbands spaghetti!

I served this with ‘Fizzy lifting juice’ which was a pink raspberry lemonade with a homemade label. If you have younger kids and don’t want them to have lemonade, try using sparkling water. If you want an adult-version of the drink – fizzy lifting cocktail? As long as there is some fizz then you can’t go wrong.

Dessert

This was an obvious choice for me, it had to be a very chocolatey ‘Bruce Bogtrotter Chocolate Cake’ inspired by my favourite Roald Dahl creation – Matilda.

You can buy or make your own chocolate cake, just make sure it is covered with lots of chocolate icing.

Why not serve it with a chocolate milkshake, hot chocolate or even a chocolate flavoured liqueur from Willy Wonka’s chocolate flowing river!

Activities & Extras

During intervals between courses why not set up a make your own ‘George’s Marvellous medicine’ station i.e juice for the kids or cocktails for the adults with a variety of options you can choose and add to a labelled bottle.

You can also watch one of the many films based on Roald Dahl’s books while you enjoy dinner, play themed games (charades acting out your favourite stories or pictionary drawing your favourite characters) and then snuggle up with one of the books after dinner. We also found this Roald Dahl Scribble book with various drawing and story telling prompts inside for children which we enjoyed.

I mentioned at the beginning giving each person a Wonka bar, which can be bought online or you can make your own which is what I did. Just get a normal bar of chocolate – I chose galaxy because the large bars have paper slip on packaging which can easily be removed, amended to suit the Wonka bar logo and added back on. You can also make or printout a golden ticket with a personalised message and slip this under the wrapping.